


Operation Sugarplum

by Ashura



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Happy, Humor, K/S Advent Calendar, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Enterprise saves Christmas for some colony children. Just some light, happy Christmas fun for your holiday reading needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operation Sugarplum

The great hall of the Parliament House of the colony of Eridani III was, when it came down it, a warehouse. Stacks of heavy block in plain square walls, metal siding insulating it from the biting cold of the winter and reflecting the fluorescent lights in blinding flashes, there was no mistaking it for anything else.

But for the colonists, who had survived a harrowing beginning to their efforts, it was everything they needed. For the bridge crew of the starship _Enterprise_ , who had arrived just in time with much-needed relief supplies, it was a welcome change. There was a Christmas dinner laid out on the long cafeteria tables, the scent wafting through the air as crew and colonists chatted, relaxed, and made merry.

Spock did not himself 'make merry', but understood the logic in allowing the human members of the crew to do so. Morale was an important aspect of life in deep space. He also understood, whether it was logical or not, that the opportunity to socialise with a large number of new people made Jim happy. Spock had long since resigned himself to not attempting to apply too much logic to Jim Kirk.

His captain was, at present, engaged in conversation with the daughter of the Prime Minster of the colony, a girl of about eight with bright dark eyes and thick black hair plaited into braids on each side of her head. She chatted away happily, about her family, what she thought of life 'offworld,' and what she'd asked Santa Claus to bring her for Christmas.

“We are a very long way into deep space, dear,” her father said—kindly, but with what Spock found a very obvious tension around his eyes and temples. “Santa Claus might have a bit of trouble finding us all the way out here. But I'm sure we'll have a very merry Christmas all the same.”

The girl shook her head, dark plaits flying. “Santa Claus,” she declared, “is _magic_.” Spock suspected this was a repeat of a conversation they had already had, and probably more than once. He remembered his own first encounter with the idea of Santa Claus. The idea of a jolly elf with a magic sleigh and flying reindeer somehow managing, on a pre-warp world, to deliver a present to every child in the world on a single night was staggeringly illogical, even before accounting for the percentage of Earth's population who celebrated holidays other than Christmas. His father would not have allowed him to actually consider such a thing. His mother had explained the tradition to him only as an aspect of her home planet's cultural history, and he had filed it away under a section of his brain he privately called 'Humans are Illogical.'

Jim, however, had an attachment to the idea even as an adult that Spock had yet to understand. He had admitted to Spock in unguarded moments that his actual belief in Santa had been short-lived, and most of his childhood Christmases not especially merry, though he was uncharacteristically vague on the details. Yet he wore furry red hats all through December, occasionally snuck up on junior officers with a 'Ho, ho, ho!' and had enjoyed the traditions surrounding mistletoe so thoroughly at the Academy that there'd been an informal inquiry.

So Spock was not _entirely_ surprised, after the festivities had concluded, to overhear Jim asking the Prime Minister just what the rest of the colony's Christmas plans _were_. He found himself curiously conflicted in a way only Jim and his mother had ever been able to evoke—surely it was logical to dispel the child's notions of magical, gift-delivering elves as early as possible, but at the same time, Jim's concern was oddly touching.

Spock filed this away in the part of his brain he'd labelled 'Jim Kirk is even more Illogical than Other Humans.' Were it an actual physical location, it would have contained quite a sizeable amount of data.

Epsilon Eridani, the star around which they were currently orbiting, had been Earth's radar as a place for a colony for a long time—longer, McCoy had told Spock once, than they'd actually been seriously able to consider such a thing. Science fiction writers had suggested it as early as the twentieth century when a scientist calculated the odds of a habitable planet existing there, and it had always been on the top of the Federation's list of places to go—but somehow, none of the proposed colonies materialised. Worse yet, twice in history a ship full of colonists had arrived, but made it less than a year. This was the third, latest, and likely last attempt. Which made it, Spock thought, all the more illogical that Starfleet explorers would bring children along to dangerous areas of deep space with them.

He said as much later, when he and Jim were alone in the captain's ready room, debriefing. (Spock ignored all Jim's attempts at pun-filled humour about the term _debriefing_ ; it was unprofessional and it was not his job to encourage such things. Also, Jim absolutely did not require his encouragement to keep doing it anyway. Jim was sometimes quite deluded as to his own wittiness. Spock expected it would be logical to disabuse him of the notion, but really couldn't be bothered. It was less logical to expend the energy on such a futile endeavour.)

He had expected some non-committal noise of agreement, the sort that Jim employed when he would like to change something but knew it to be out of his power. Instead, the response to Spock's observation was a sombre sigh as Jim let his chin drop onto his hands.

“I know,” he said, “but there's not a good answer to that one. If you leave your kids behind, if you take them with you....” He looked up with a smile that was not really a smile at all, raw and a little bitter, and Spock wondered what memories he had inadvertantly stirred up this time. “I guess it's not necessarily a no-win situation, but maybe the best you can hope for is a draw.”

Spock regarded him calmly. “Your mother and stepfather are not representative of the whole of Starfleet families, Jim. That she should have taken you with her is likely, but it is only one case among many.”

“Not unique, though, either,” Jim pointed out. “And when she did take me with her it turned out even worse. But I know that's not representative either, so I'm thinking instead about the first Christmas I had offworld. I get where that little girl's coming from, you know?”

Spock paused to assimilate this new information. “I was not aware you had accompanied her,” he said slowly, wondering just how he'd managed to miss that pertinent bit of information.

Jim sighed again. “Because the reports are all classified, and I don't really like to talk about it. Tarsus IV. You can look it up.” He stood, resting a hand briefly on Spock's shoulder. “I'm going to hit the sack, it's been a long day. This was better than your average diplomatic dinner, but I still have about a hundred new faces to remember. You coming?”

“Negative, at least for the moment. I have data to retrieve and analyse from the science lab. Jim—you were on Tarsus IV?” He knew the story, had taught it to his own students, but had never had reason to investigate the names of the survivors. “I did not know this.” He added it to the mental file, Things He Does Not Care to Contemplate.

“Like I said, it's not exactly party conversation.” Jim ducked his head, that too-careless motion he had when something bothered him and he didn't want to show it. “And it's a lesson we've all learned from by now. The PM here isn't exactly the type to murder his own colonists, especially since he's related to so many of them, and friends with most. It's just the Christmas thing that's bugging me, I promise. I wish we could play Santa ourselves, or something. I hate seeing kids get disappointed.”

“Understood.” Spock stood as well, holding two fingers out toward his Captain in a symbolic good-night kiss. “Rest well, Jim.”

He sat there for some time, considering, after Jim had gone to bed.

* * *

“Jim.” He was dreaming about pizza, of all things—thin crust, cheese stretching in long steaming tendrils from plate to mouth, and forever afterward when he recalled this moment to memory, it was accompanied by the lingering bite of pepperoni. “Jim, wake up. I believe I have solved the energy dilemma.”

Jim Kirk was usually pretty fast on the draw, when it came to waking up. Between the screwed-up childhood that meant you had to know when to climb out the window, the possibility through much of life of angry dads and boyfriends coming home early, and the need to be alert and awake when emergencies happen on a starship, it didn't generally take him long to go from zero to conscious.

But he was still fairly sure he was missing something, here. “Spock,” he said, as the taste of idealised pizza faded into very real morning breath, “I think I'm missing several steps of the process, here. What energy dilemma?”

Spock looked pleased with himself. That was almost always a good sign. Vulcans, of course, as a general rule, claimed not to do 'pleased with themselves,' but Jim had never seen a group of people so smug in his life. On Spock, though, it could—sometimes--be a good look.

“You said last night,” he explained, “that you wished the Enterprise could act in lieu of the Santa Claus figure of your childhood. I interpreted this to mean that you wished to surprise the colony's children with presents, rather than a desire to wear a red fur suit and frolic with flying reindeer.”

Jim blinked, his mind whirring and racing to catch up. “Yes,” he said, because that seemed like the simplest answer and the one most likely to lead into the next part of Spock's explanation.

“Good. I then considered,” Spock continued, “the methods of transportation at our disposal, and the number of children on the colony. It is theoretically possible that a member of the _Enterprise_ crew could beam to each house that contains a child, leave a present, and beam back up. The dilemma I then faced was that regardless of whether one or a small group of crewmembers beamed to each dwelling, or whether a large number did so all at once, the problem lay with the transporter. So I contacted Mr Scott.”

“You...woke up Scotty to see if we could play Santa Claus?” Through Jim's surprise, he could feel a big old grin starting to spread across his face. Leave it to Spock to really surprise him sometimes. “I'm betting he loved that.”

“I admit I was somewhat surprised by his enthusiasm,” Spock conceded. “He assured me that if he and Chekov tended to the matter personally, they would be able to make the necessary adjustments to send groups of people to different locations within a small centralised area. But to keep the transporter functioning for the entire duration of the project would both consume excessive power and risk burning out the chemical repeaters.”

Jim was starting to feel more in the loop. “And that's the energy problem you woke me up to say was solved,” he finishes. “Even though I didn't know we were looking into it in the first place.”

“Affirmative,” Spock says, with no other explanation than that, which meant Jim _knew_ he was feeling pleased with himself.

Jim reached out to rest his fingers against Spock's arm, felt him tense a little beneath the touch. He was keyed up; it was really going to be too bad if there wasn't time for Jim to take advantage of that fact. “What's the solution?” he asked, and as soon as Spock had explained it, Jim kissed him.

* * *

Spock had clearly underestimated the appeal of Santa Claus. Almost the very moment Jim had announced over the shipwide broadcast that he was looking for a thirty-five volunteers in what he'd inexplicably dubbed 'Operation Sugarplum' to play the part of the jolly gift-giving elf, Uhura's console had lit up with offers from every deck and department. And now they had arrived, following the Captain's instructions in grand style. The transporter room was full of them, most in dress uniforms from their cadet days, some in Operations red, and most with a fluffy red Santa hat perched jauntily on their heads. Spock was uncertain where all those had come from. One belonging to a young officer from Medical looked suspiciously as if it had spent a previous incarnation as a sock, but Spock did not consider himself an experienced judge of Santa Claus paraphernalia, so neglected to mention it.

As for the gifts themselves, in this too their crew had risen to the occasion. Toys bought on too-rare shore leaves for children at home and donated now to a noble cause, keepsakes brought aboard for good luck, things that could be made on the spot by talented crafters or from spare parts from engineering—not a child on Eridani would go without presents. Spock himself had supplied a roster of the name, sex, and age of each recipient, and at first had attempted to aid in selecting appropriate gifts from the pile. Jim had gently reassigned him after he'd asserted that a complicated geometric puzzle of the Vegan star system was a perfectly acceptable gift for a child of nearly two years old, despite the words “for ages 8 and up” written on the box. A Vulcan child of eight, he thought, would have found it insulting.

He had devoted his time to the mathematical aspects of the mission instead, a task to which he felt far better suited than choosing gifts for unfamiliar human children. He had once attempted, on Jim's insistence, to help select birthday presents for Jim's young niece and nephew back on Earth, but by the time the objective was achieved, they were both frustrated and the experience was not repeated.

He had completed his adjustments and joined the assembling crewmembers in the transporter room making his way to where Commander Scott was briefing the captain on the smaller details of the mission, and said captain was wearing an expression Spock had come to understand meant he was very determined to look as though he knew was Scott was talking about. As Spock approached, Jim broke away from the conversation to come meet him, clapping a hand onto his shoulder. He squeezed lightly, and that was a motion Spock had come to understand meant any one of several variations on _I love you._

Then he set a red pointed hat on Spock's head.

It was on the tip of Spock's tongue to point out how very unnecessary that was, and how he had no intention of wearing such an illogical accessory. And then he looked at Jim's face, and thought about how he had already rewritten several shipwide subroutines, woken a senior member of the bridge crew in the middle of the night, and provoked a mustering of almost the entire off-duty crew in order to be able to see that expression, and it would be far more illogical to begin protesting now. He adjusted the hat over the tips of his ears, and raised an eyebrow.

Jim flashed Spock a dazzling smile and swung up onto the transporter pad so he could be seen by everyone in the room. “Right! You all have your assignments, and your comm badges are all activated so you can key back into the transporter with your own personal signature without Chekov and Scotty there having to do it all manually. It's all in the timing, you absolutely _have_ to drop the presents and head for home! Not because it's dangerous--” he assured them, because no amount of Christmas cheer would have him actually risking his crew, “but because once it shuts off, it's off till it warms up again, and you'll be stuck planetside all night having to explain to overly excited kids why Santa's transporter isn't working. Got it?” He was met with a cheer that could only be interpreted as affirmation, and the grin grew brighter, if such a thing were possible. “Then let's get to it. Scotty, do your stuff!”

Spock, like everyone else in the room, retrieved his assigned packet of presents and located his spot within a certain radius of the transporter pad. He held a collection of assorted items designated for a pair of six-year-old twins, the children of one of the colony's senior medical researchers. He found himself hoping that they would enjoy the gifts, and assured himself that desiring a positive outcome from an endeavour that so many people had put so much time and effort into was perfectly logical.

And he could still see Jim's beaming grin when the _Enterprise_ disappeared around him.

* * *

“There is one other matter, Captain. A small one. ” The Prime Minister of Eridani III had reached his position by being an expert diplomat. Jim already knew this, but he could recognise the signs for himself. The man had already thanked them again for bringing the relief packages they'd been sent with, but he was just itching to get something else out.

And Jim, who was actually pretty good too, was managing to keep a straight face. “What is it?”

The Prime Minister smiled. “My daughter,” he explained, “wanted me to be sure to tell you that it turns out space is no barrier to Santa Claus after all. She's building something out of the motor components as we speak, and the blue scarf is her favourite colour. I think,” he added, “that she wanted to reassure you that he'd manage to find you, too.”

Jim smiled, relaxed and happy, and said, “Tell her not to worry. We saw him here, too.”

“Almost forty of him,” Sulu murmured from the helm, and Chekov kicked him.

The Prime Minister met Jim's eyes. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Merry Christmas, Prime Minister,” Jim answered, tossing off a playful salute as he leaned back in his chair. “Hopefully we'll see you next year.” He knew he couldn't promise to make it happen again, or even be in the same quadrant, but he had a feeling he didn't have to explain that.

“Hopefully,” the Prime Minister answered, and it was about more than just Christmas presents, but about surviving, thriving, proving that the third time could be the charm for a colony in Epsilon Eridani.

They wished each other the usual pleasantries and closed the channel. Jim could feel everyone on the bridge looking at him, and kept staring ahead at the now-blank vidscreen. “Well, our work here is done. Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!”

“Is that a technical course heading, Keptin?” Chekov teased him.

“I think it's the speed,” Sulu countered. “Warp factor dash.”

Jim saw no reason to deign that with a response, but to his further surprise, Spock did it for him.

“I find that unlikely, Lieutenant. It is absolutely illogical to ascribe warp technology to a reindeer. Even one with an anomalous nose.”

Jim nearly spit out his coffee, and he really thought for a minute that Sulu might never stop laughing. Not for anything close to the first time, he felt incredibly grateful for his amazing, brilliant, generous crew. And none so much as his amazing, brilliant, surprising first officer, who took a throwaway comment and made it happen.

Much later, when the Gamma shift had come on and the senior bridge crew were all nestled snug in their beds dancing with visions of Operation Sugarplum, he was in a far better position to express his appreciation. (The position itself, and all variants, had been meticulously planned and tested with careful prior research.) And later still, he stretched out alongside Spock, feeling the rhythmic pattern of the heartbeat beneath his cheek as he let himself drift off to sleep.

“Merry Christmas to all,” he murmured, already half-dozing, “and to all a good night.”

Spock didn't respond, just tightened his arms around Jim. It was more than enough.

 

the end.


End file.
